Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today's Republican right aren't really conservatives. Their goal isn't to conserve what we have. It's to take us backwards.

They'd like to return to the 1920s -- before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s -- the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the "rot" is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we'd be back in the late nineteenth century -- before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons -- railroad, financial, and oil titans -- ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Listen carefully to today's Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don't help the poor or unemployed or anyone who's fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation's wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America's wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker's wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers' wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today's Republican right aren't really conservatives. Their goal isn't to conserve what we have. It's to take us backwards.

They'd like to return to the 1920s -- before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s -- the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the "rot" is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we'd be back in the late nineteenth century -- before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons -- railroad, financial, and oil titans -- ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Listen carefully to today's Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don't help the poor or unemployed or anyone who's fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation's wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America's wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker's wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers' wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Fern, isn't this about the fifth time you've posted something like this.

The GOP is tapping into the fact that voters are angry that while they are having to make cuts, they are working until May to pay a tax burden for lazy government workers who make more than they do and have gold-plated benefits, and they still get shitty service whenever they have to deal with a government bureaucracy.

They are angry that half of us are pulling the wagon while the other half are riding in it..

NOw, I think there is a valid argument that can be made that there's a disparity in wealth in this country and that the working class has declined. But the "progressives" who put spotted owls before property rights and let the useless sue for imaginary discrimination have done just as much to kill jobs.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

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SIX of the top Ten Richest members of Congress are=DEMOCRATS-Progressive..

Thankfully, bfgrn maintains his record of posting other people's opinions in his steadfast refusal to form his own.

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And you continue to be unable to address any issues. Knowledge does not magically ascend upon us Cali Girl, it is gained, developed and increased by reading and comprehending. The issues the author makes should be the topic. Are you able to make an intelligent reply?

The USA started going backwards )socially speaking, I mean) when they elected Ronald Reagan.

I don't think RR was the worst POTUS ever, (in fact he did some great things while in office) but his message was that of a social reactionary and a lot of Americans liked it and still like it, too.

Well 40 years later and the effects of that reactionary thinking (when placed in policies and laws) have melted down the world's economy.

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The liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city upon the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the close of the 1960's, due to a weak and splintered Democratic party caused by the Vietnam War and political assassinations. It ushered in a conservative era that has continued ever since. It has been a total failure of governance based on a regressive ideology. It has been a disaster, a negative mirror image of the liberal era. Ronald Reagan was the biggest socialist in history. He is the pied piper on the road to serfdom. He began a systematic dismantling of all the gains the middle class had secured. Reagan transferred wealth from the poor and the middle class to the opulent. He looted Social Security to cover the shortfalls of his tax cuts for the wealthy. And the whole 'small businessman is the engine of growth' was cruel rhetoric. The self-employment tax jumped as much as 66 percent under Reagan.

Conservatives have built nothing in 30 +years...NOTHING. They have only destroyed and torn down everything our grandparents and parents built together as ONE nation, one people.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

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